Cancun Airport - 6/3/06 - 1:57 pm

6/3/06

I’m sitting in “Restaurant Bar” inside the Cancun airport in Mexico. I’ve just ordered a Canadian Club and Sprite of which I am in dire need. Approximately an hour and a half ago I disembarked from my flight, which was supposed to leave St. Louis at 7 a.m., but actually departed at 10, due to a fractured-ass plane. I’m not complaining, as my girlfriend Hanni and her roommate are coming in on a separate flight in some twenty minutes or so, and I would have had just to sit here on my ass longer and probably become tanked out of my gourd on $8 drinks. And I’ve just realized that due to the fact they they’re out of Canadian Club, I have inadvertently ordered Passport scotch and Sprite. Dammit. I am a dufus.

I’m hoping they can find me whenever they get in. I left a message on Hanni’s voicemail which, I admit, might have been a little rambling and frantic, and she may or may not have understood my instructions. You see, I’m no longer in the arrival terminal, as, unbeknownst to yours truly, after you leave the structure you’re not allowed back inside. So my choices were: Stand out in the heat and sopping humidity for upwards of 2 hours while they arrive and make their way through customs, or hike the thousand or so yards over to the departure terminal with my 3 not un-heavy bags in a desperate attempt to procure whiskey and a pay phone.

Incidentally, there must be a phrase to describe the opposite of “technophobia,” because I think I’m afflicted with it. I would rather speak to or use a machine any day if it meant I could avoid actually asking a human being for assistance. It’s almost always faster and indefinitely more pleasant to the senses, as you always know if a machine isn’t working it’s your fault, and not some deep personal defect of the individual. Near as I can figure, the main requirement for the porters at the bus and taxi area outside the departure terminal is to swoop down on you like vultures to carrion, and to not tell you where you can find a payphone.

I asked no less than 3 people (not counting the guard who kindly informed me I would not be reentering the region) where I could find a payphone. Seems like a simple question, yes? Well no, apparently, and this is why I loathe humanity. Perhaps it’s a problem of the language barrier, but my “where could I find a payphone?” was invariably answered with the question “what group are you with?” referring to the thousands of taxi and bus companies loading passengers by the throngs as if en route to the rendering plant in Soylent Green.

Interlude: My drink has just arrived and it’s not that bad. It’s an extra 3 bucks, but I think I might have a Crown Royal next. End interlude.

Anyway, when I attempted to explain that I was waiting for some other people who were coming in on a later flight and just needed to call and leave a message on their voicemail, they very nicely informed me that I “could wait right over here, sir,” and gestured to an outcropping of nice cement upon which I could squat. It didn’t matter how hard I tried to explain that,

“I just need a payphone, thanks. Do you know if there’s one up this way?”

They invariably told me that I could wait here for my party, or that I could go ahead and get on the correct transport to my hotel. Getting into the whole story of how I didn’t know the name or location of my hotel (Hanni’s roommate Rene had that information, and no matter how many times I attempted to procure it somehow it slipped through my fingers like water) just seemed like too much trouble to bother.

I finally decided to just wander up toward the airport proper and fend for myself in phone location. (Incidentally, as hard as I have harangued against it, I am starting to see the advantages of owning a cell phone…don’t rub it in.)

Interlude: I have just ordered another Passport and Sprite. No matter how many times I practice simple Spanish phrases such as “uno mas,” I always panic at the last minute and revert to “one more.” What the fuck is wrong with me? End interlude.

Success! Telephones! And they had credit card readers and everything! Only fifteen minutes later I finally figured out how to make an international credit card call (with all the fumbling around in the system, it could have cost me between $3 and $30; time will tell) and, at the beep, I informed my girlfriend

“Hi, darlin’, I’m in the departure terminal because I left the airport after customs and wasn’t allowed back in, so if you come out the area where all the buses and taxis are and make a right, you’ll see the departure part of the airport. Come in and take a left, I’m all the way down at the Restaurant Bar. Sorry you guys have to actually come collect me, but I couldn’t stand out there in the heat anymore. I love you, bye.”

And I did just that. So here I sit, typing furiously away and wondering how much battery power is left on my laptop because it has taken it upon itself to spirit away the little icon informing me of such things. I think it’s become self-aware like Skynet.

Hanni’s plane should have landed by now, and if I’m not mistaken they’ll be yanking their luggage off the turnstile at this very moment. I estimate another 20-30 minutes before I start to worry whether my message was too vague or if they got stopped in customs because she was smuggling uncut heroin in her vagina. Adios for now.